Interesting mix of platforming and puzzle gameplay. You know you got something special when I couldn't exit the game until I finished every challenge on the first 20 levels. Still itching for more.

Edit: I just finished the game and I can say for sure it's a must-buy if you love puzzle games and platformers. Most of the puzzles are on the easy side though, but there is still some challenge to be had here with some of the optional objectives. Absolutely love the music!

I was asked to check out Life Goes On for my first impressions video series. I'm very glad I was as it's a very imaginative puzzler that I've continued playing in my off time as a result of enjoying it so much. The game has a much needed sense of humour about things (since otherwise you're just commiting mass puzzle solving murder) and is a lot of fun. The puzzles themselves vary a bit in terms of difficulty but once you get a grip on the mechanics I don't think you'll ever get frustrated to the point of giving up. New mechanics get introduced with each new location you visit also, such as being able to freeze your knights or make them levitate.

If you're curious to see it in action my first impressions video can be seen below.

As someone who frequently dies in video games, this game is wonderful. Dying is expected, necessary, and actually fun in this game. It's simple to understand, but solving the puzzles efficiently is challenging enough to make it fun without being ridiculously difficult. Life Goes On is definitely a game that everyone should try.

32 of 35 people (91%) found this review helpful3 people found this review funny

Recommended

2.1 hrs on record

Posted: May 18, 2015

Note: video review embedded below.

I took me a long time to pin down exactly what it was that felt so strange about Life Goes On. I knew it wasn’t just the morbid nature of repurposing your corpses as puzzle solving tools, bizarre and unsettling as that is. And it wasn’t that there was something wrong with the puzzle themselves, because even with this odd feeling swirling around inside of me I was having a grand time solving them.

When I finally figured out what had been bugging me, it was both surprising and a little amusing. With how deeply the concept of death has been incorporated and mechanicalized in games, and then instilled in me through years of playing them, I realized Life Goes On felt off because it was doing precisely the opposite of what I’d been trained to do above all else: stay alive. With how many countless grotesquely violent and gore fill games I’ve played I’ve become rather horrifyingly numb to using violence as a mechanic against others, but through all of those keeping myself alive was always the objective above all else.

To do otherwise in most games is to effectively stop playing. Death is simply failure by another name, often meaningless but nearly always present and in some cases even romanticized as one of a game’s most notorious traits (Dark Souls being an obvious example). Life Goes On asked that I rethink the concept of death and in doing so it made it mean something again. Each time one of my knights died I felt an odd mixture of joy at being able to move forward, and distress at the very thought I was taking pleasure from leading my character to the slaughter.

What’s special about Life Goes On is that it doesn’t treat death the way so many modern games do. It’s not cynical, graphic, or intended to shock and appal you. It’s more like a cartoon where someone gets an anvil dropped on their head. Its situations are so absurd and everything drawn in such a delightfully cheerful tone, that I couldn’t take anything seriously because I wasn’t supposed to. Life Goes On recognizes how ridiculous its concept is and mostly manages to come off as silly, maybe even hilarious to some, rather than disturbing.

The way this unorthodox view of death is then applied to puzzle designs helps make a tired genre feel fresh again. There are a lot of the usual devices at work here, be they buttons, blocks, or various hazards, but the way you interact with them with the help of your past failures makes them feel original and inspired. Spikes become walkways, freezing beams create pushable blocks, and sticking yourself in an outlet completes the circuit opening the door. With death being directly integrated into the game design, it also helps take a lot of the edge off of missing a jump or screwing up a sequence, which removes most of the frustration so typical of the genre and had me playing through the entire game in just a few extended sittings.

I realize I’ve sort of come full circle with this review, beginning with how Life Goes On made me remember that death isn’t just a meaningless game of numbers, but then arriving back at how I enjoy its mechanical use here. Ultimately Life Goes On has its cake and eats it too, so any attempt to make it out to entirely subvert the usual violent video game trappings would be dubious at best. But that it made me consider all of this, with seemingly no intention and while delivering an excellent puzzle platformer, feels like at least a modest accomplishment. It got me thinking about things I never even recognize in most games, and though it didn’t quite go all the way, it started a discussion and even managed to have a lot of fun in the process. Odd praise to be sure, but it’s a rather odd game itself isn’t it.

Life Goes On reminded me a bit of The Swapper but instead of creating clones you're creating dead clones. See the resemblance ? Well, they're clones, but not in a traditional way. Each knight is given a random name to make you think you're dealing with other persons here. But they don't fool me. It would've been nice if every now and then a knight would get different equipment. Then, and only then, will I get the illusion that I'm dealing with different persons here. But it's not important, so let's just drop it.

Anyway, you have to use your dead clones to make it past the levels. See spikes but can't cross ? Just jump in the middle of it and you'll be able to jump on that guy's head with another knight. The game starts with basic puzzle platforming but halfway through becomes more difficult when it throws other puzzle elements your way. It never becomes frustratingly difficult, as long as you pay attention. I got stuck in a level or two and in hindsight they were actually very obvious. So it also depends on the person eventually. The game isn't very long and you should be able to finish it in 2-3 hours max, depending on if you want to earn all of the available medals.

The graphics aren't great, they are actually pretty simple but they get the job done. I personally thought it lacked a bit of personality. The voice acting is also very basic, with only a scream whenever a knight dies. The music on the other hand is better than expected and I enjoyed it very much.

The last 2 levels of the game (the true last level and the credits level) are the most impressive levels and it's unfortunate that the other levels are so static in comparison (even if some of the puzzles are harder). If there ever will be a sequel I sincerely hope they'll make use of more platforming, just like those last 2 levels. Or maybe a combination of both, who knows ?

Life Goes On is an enjoyable puzzle game and if you liked The Swapper I'm pretty certain you'll have fun playing this one, too.

As the trailer suggests, this game is a humorous cross between puzzle platformer and lemmings, where you take advantage of the deaths of your predecessors to progress through the different levels.

With an unlimited number of knights at your disposal, you control one until it dies, then another, and so on, and on each try to die in a way that your corpse will be of some benefit to your next knight. But doing well at a level means using fewer knights (wouldn't want them to die in vain, right? ;)

Progressing in the game uses more of your puzzle skills than your platforming skills, and for considering you will only be using 3-4 buttons, the game gets surprisingly complex.

Completing the various levels and achievements feels reasonably satisfying, and it can be amusing to overcome any obstacle by throwing numerous knights at it in various ways.

The game contains several references to other games, most of which I found quite amusing, but more than anything else I found myself laughing out loud at many of the messages describing how varyingly successful I had been at the end of each level.

11 of 13 people (85%) found this review helpful2 people found this review funny

Recommended

11.4 hrs on record

Posted: November 21, 2015

The demo of this game was awesome and promising. I preordered it and really waited for the release. The time passed extremely slowly. The release date finally came and I have the chance to play it in it's complete state. The only thing I can say now is this: YOU MUST BUY THIS GAME! IT'S DAMN AWESOME!

It's basically a puzzle platformer, with the twist that you need to die (several times) to pass each level. You need to burn, crash, electrocute, stick up, jump to death with your knights to progress and all of these in the funniest ways possible. The puzzles have several unique method I've never seen in other platformers before.

There are several goals besides that you need to reach the cup, like time, number of deaths and you need to feed Jeff on each level, but these are just optional.

And the completely free DLC (for previous owners) with several new puzzles is coming soon!

9 of 10 people (90%) found this review helpful1 person found this review funny

Recommended

0.7 hrs on record

Posted: May 16

Life Goes On is one of those games where a small, simple concept really carries the game through the whole experience. The idea that you need to die to use your own corpse to get through a puzzle is really cool. Most of the puzzles force you plan a few steps ahead to strategically die in one spot to use that corpse later. The puzzles hit a sweet spot where they're not so tough that they leave you crying in frustration, but are hard enough that you'll need a few tries to see the solution, giving you a solid sense of satisfaction when you do solve it.

The game has a lot of charm and great sense of humour. It's pretty self-aware of how morbid it's core concept is and takes more than a little delight in punishing the main characters over and over again. I laughed out loud a couple of times.

Most players will finish the game in a single night, which is fair value for the price. I like games in which you can have a full experience in a single sitting. In that sense it reminds me of Thomas was Alone and similar indies. Each level has extras challenges and a target number of deaths needed to get to the end. I found myself replaying levels to try different tactics to avoid piling up bodies as a brute force solution to a puzzle.

The only complaint I have is that jumping feels a little loose at times. There's a particular sequence with ice blocks that I felt held me up because I had trouble sticking my jumps, not because I hadn't solved the puzzle. Beyond that, it also feels like the game shows you most of its ideas around 75% of the way through. Even so, I suggest sticking it through to the end because the final level for each world is epic and a great example of using level design to tell a story.